High Synagogue

Address:

ul. Józefa 38, Kraków

Description

Built in the years 1556-1563, it used to belong to the wealthiest Jewish synagogues in Kazimierz.

Its name is connected with the location of the men's prayer room on the first floor. It was probably a superstructure of a formerly single-floor building, which had already been taken by shops. It was the only synagogue with a prayer room on the first floor in Poland. Destroyed during the Second World War, after 1945 it was mainly used as a warehouse. In 2005, a display was arranged inside the synagogue about the history and culture of Jews.

In 2008, the building was recovered by the Jewish Religious Community, which currently intends to lease it out to the Historical Museum of Kraków. It has retained an old façade, reinforced with four buttresses and three semi-circularly terminated windows. On our way out, we pass a modest Renaissance portal whose door is decorated by ironwork.

During maintenance, the walls of the prayer room revealed fragments of wall paintings with inscriptions from the period of reconstruction in the 1860s. The stone Aron Kodesh, enclosed in columns – the oldest and largest in Poland – is topped with a grotesque ornament featuring an image of two griffins.